About 40 percent of data records of a healthcare provider contains either misleading information or errors. What is more grievous is the fact that nearly half of clinical trials in the US are unreported. That’s correct.

All of this and more misuse of available data is preventing from providing better services and delivering appropriate patient care. This is where blockchain technology comes in that has the potential to transform the healthcare industry by offering increased privacy, security, transparency, and interoperability of medical data. Blockchain gives patients greater assurance about their personal information being protected. Furthermore, by providing funding to the medical research companies, the process of drug treatments discovery can be accelerated and help in saving lives.

But it’s not all issue free as technical challenges present with numerous blockchains and the lack of crypto regulation still needs to be overcome. However, if these challenges are tackled, it is believed, blockchain can bring a radical change in the healthcare industry.

Funding For Research

The reason that data has become so integral to the health systems, healthcare provides one of the best and the clearest use cases for distributed ledger technology (DLT). Funding is an added role of blockchain in medicine that can improve the results in medical research and drug discovery.

Reportedly, about 60 percent of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are already either using or exploring blockchain technology. European Union and Sweden have even used a collaborative approach (separately) to bring blockchain in healthcare. One instance is Pharma company Verseon that launched its security exchange which according to its CEO Adityo Prakash,

“By using blockchain technology to conduct regulations compliant sale and trading of tokenized securities Verseon is attempting to change how life science innovations are funded, who gets to participate and to enjoy the potential returns.”

Data Efficiency & Security In Healthcare

Immutability of data is believed to be the most significant benefit of blockchain according to Pharma professionals. As for the opportunities for blockchain use, it lies majorly in the medical supply chain and electronic medical records along with scientific data sharing and clinical trials management.

One of the most crucial advantages of DLT is the processing and storage of data arising from the medical treatments as Aamir Butt, CEO of Lancor says,

“Patients own their own healthcare data when blockchain technology is used so the data has greatly more integrity than can be achieved in other models of data handling.”

Improved security is another promise given by DLT where cryptography maintains the integrity of transactions. In today’s times where privacy is at risk, blockchain minimizes threats to data security in a reliable manner.

A Bright Future Riddled With Obstacles

Blockchain has without any doubt a bright future in healthcare, however, it has its own set of obstacles before it could reach wide adoption. The biggest barrier to adoption is access to skilled blockchain personnel. Awareness to blockchain and being too difficult to understand are the obstacles that along with regulation still need to be handled.

Furthermore, blockchain-based health platforms need scalability and transaction speed that means blockchain has still a way to go before it is able to deliver the promising results.